"So it is possible for humans to use Natural Magic, it would just require them to learn from one of the Daelin?" Corrin queried.
"Well, yes, humans can either learn Natural Magic through the Daelin or another being who learned it directly from one of the Daelin, like me." Ophion answered again.
"…Interesting. How did humans come up with Chanting Magic?" Corrin asked.
"Despite keeping their distance, humans were still scared of being annihilated by either the Daelin or by the magical creatures, so they devoted many resources to the study of magic and specifically a way for humans to use magic. After many years, humans were finally able to come up with Chanting Magic. Chanting Magic is inherently weaker than Natural Magic in many aspects, but it was still able to allow humans to at least compete with magical creatures."
"What's the difference?"
"The main difference between the two is that Natural Magic is used by channeling both personal and ambient mana into spells, whereas Chanting Magic is used by commanding ambient mana to function according to the caster's wishes. Now, whether the ambient mana listens to the caster's wishes or not is up to the ability of the caster. A mage's experience, willpower, knowledge, connection to ambient mana, and the type of spell itself all contribute to whether or not the ambient mana will follow the caster's commands. Natural Magic bypasses practically all shortfalls of Chanting Magic due to the use of the combination of personal mana and ambient mana. A Natural Mage will use their personal mana to form the basis of their spell, and then ambient mana to power up the spell. This happens mainly due to personal mana being stronger than ambient mana in terms of purity, so ambient mana is naturally drawn to it."
Ophion continued by saying, "As for ambient mana itself, it is mostly natureless, meaning that it can be converted to any other type of mana through magic. I say mostly because other natures of mana will always be present, just not as much as natureless mana. There are also instances where a certain nature of mana will be more present, such as fire mana during and after the presence of a fire in an area, water mana in an area where there is a body of water, or light and dark magic during the day and night respectively."
"What types of mana are there?" Corrin interjected.
"I was just getting to that. There are eight main types: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light, Dark, White, and Gold. Most of those should be self-explanatory except White and Gold. White mana is the natureless mana that appears everywhere and makes up the majority of ambient mana. Gold mana is the purest form of mana and occurs naturally in small amounts but is abundant in very mana-rich areas. It is similar to a very condensed form of White mana, and it is used as the base of all higher tier magics."
"Okay, that makes sense. So, what is the final type of magic?"
Ophion grinned and said, "Runic Magic. My specialty."
"Runic Magic is magic that is channeled through written runes. There are many different runes, but only 8 correspond with each mana type. Each runic letter, except for the mana type runes, doesn't necessarily do anything by themselves, but when combined to form words, they create enchantments. What is so unique about Runic Magic is its versatility. You are allowed much more freedom when creating enchantments with runes than you have when trying to manipulate the other forms of magic."
"How so?"
"Well, there's several ways. For instance, as long as your enchantments remain charged properly, you are able to cast spells much faster. Instead of going through the processes to cast a spell like you would with Chanting or Natural Magic, you simply have to activate your enchantment in its specified manner, and you can cast your spell. There are many different activation sequences which is another reason Runic Magic is so versatile. An example of different activation sequences would be a [CHANNEL] sequence versus a [SWING DOWN] sequence. To activate the spell of a [CHANNEL] sequence, you simply have to channel the appropriate mana into the enchanted item. To activate the spell of the [SWING DOWN] sequence, you simply swing down the enchanted item. Simple enough, right?" Ophion responded.
"Yeah, I guess." Corrin replied, "How do you make an actual enchantment? Like, how do you make something do cool stuff?"
Ophion blinked.
"Um, well, as you said, that comes from the actual enchantment. You can think about enchantments as a set of commands for an item. For example. A ring with an enchantment that makes it shoot out a fireball. A basic way to form that enchantment would be to form a runic sentence along the lines of '[CHANNEL][FIRE][FORM ORB][CONTROL ORB]' which roughly translates to 'when fire mana is channeled, form an orb of fire and allow the mana channeler to control the orb.' With me so far?"
"Yeah, that sounds easy enough." Corrin responded contemplatively.
"Okay, now, something important to understand is that that enchantment would only work once. Can you guess why?"
"Excuse me?" Corrin asked, irritated again.
"Uh, do you have any guesses as to why the enchantment would only work once?" Ophion asked, a little shyly.
"Yeah, I understood the question the first time, I just don't know why you are trying to get me to guess. Just tell me the answer." Corrin responded with a blank expression.
"Well…but…you learn better like that…oh never mind. It's because there's no charging sequence. Oh, I forgot to mention that you have to charge enchantments in order to activate them. But in order to keep them powered in order to use more than once, you need to make sure they are able to charge with mana." Ophion was explaining before Corrin interjected.
"Wait, wait, wait. You lost me. What do you mean you have to charge enchantments to activate them? And how do you make sure they charge with mana?"
Okay, I was just about to explain that before you interrupted. You know, you could be a little nicer to me. I'm only trying to help you, you know." Ophion responded as he cocked his head to the side a little, with a bit of a frown on his face.
Corrin sighed. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry about that. It's just that it's been a difficult few days for me since I woke up and I guess I'm a little impatient. I just want to get the hell out of wherever it is that I am and get back at whoever put me there." Corrin responded, getting angrier as he went on.
"Ah." Ophion said. "I see. Well, I guess I can't blame you on that one. Whatever, just be a little nicer alright. We're going to be a team, after all."
Corrin's expression turned serious but before he could say anything, Ophion continued with his explanation.
"Back to what I was saying. Yes, you need to charge enchantments to activate them. This is probably the most difficult and time-consuming part of Runic Magic. Particularly because it requires the collection of certain…materials which take a lot of time, but the actual charging process itself isn't very quick either. Some of the simpler enchantments don't require too much to activate, only some mana, but most require much more. As for how to make sure they can charge, you just have to write a charging sequence into the enchantment, similar to an activation sequence. Charging sequences are usually pretty simple but get more complicated depending on the complexity of the enchantment. If you wanted to make a charging sequence for the fireball ring, for example, it would look something like '[ALWAYS][ABSORB][FIRE][UNTIL FULL]' which roughly translates to 'always absorb fire mana until completely charged.' Does that make sense."
"Yeah. This all seems pretty easy to understand, at least for now. Anything else about Runic Magic you think is immediately important?" Corrin asked, still wearing the serious look from before.
"Hmm…probably only that the size of the object is an important factor for enchanting. You can put more enchantments and more complex enchantments on a sword than you can for a ring. Other than that, I think I covered pretty much everything. I'm pretty proud of myself. Why do you ask?" Ophion asked seeming confused.
"I just wanted to make sure we covered everything before moving onto the more pressing issue which is how exactly I get out of here and what you meant by us being a team."
"Ah, yes, you're right, that is pretty important. Well, basically, I'm going to implant a rune on your body that's going to merge us together." Ophion said while looking at Corrin expectantly.
"…"
"…"
"Merge? You're going to merge with me?" Corrin asked, back to being irritated.
"Of course, how else am I supposed to get out of this place. Daelor knows how long I've been stuck in here. Don't worry too much about it though, you'll get lots of benefits out of the agreement."
"Okay…like what?"
"The benefits are all pretty spectacular, in my humble opinion. The rune I'm going to implant on you is going to modify your body in order to make you half-human half-Daelin. That means your muscle density will drastically increase, your sensory perception will be noticeably boosted, and your intelligence will be about twice as high as the average human. In addition to that, it will enable you to actually use runic magic since it will alter your body's composition to be similar to the magically-oriented bodies of the Daelin. Plus, as an added bonus, I will live in your mind rent-free until you adequately recharge my Grimoire! How fun is that!" Ophion exclaimed excitedly.
Corrin stood there staring at Ophion with his blank expression again.
"Alright let's focus on that last tidbit," Corrin said, "what did you mean by recharge your Grimoire? And what is your Grimoire?"
"You touched a golden book covered in runes with a really cool design on the cover to enter my Soul Heart right?" Ophion asked expectantly.
"Ah. That's what that was."
"Yeah. As to what I meant by recharging my Grimoire, to make a long story short, you have to kill stuff. A lot of stuff. I mean like a metric shit ton of stuff." Ophion said with a grin.